CEO wage negotiations have nothing in common with employee wage setting.
The most common argument I see is that the ceo pay has increased relative to the common or average employee salary. I doubt being a ceo has become that much more difficult over the same time period though.
> The only time I see arguments against high CEO pay (speaking generally), it's from people that know absolutely nothing about what a CEO does or how exceptionally difficult it is to operate a very big company.
Which links ceo pay via complaints to "how exceptionally difficult" it is to do the job of a ceo. The implication is if people understood how hard the ceo job is that they would not complain about the pay. That implication does not make sense if there is no link between difficulty and pay.
So what? The fact that you think this is an argument and not a meaningless talking point further supports the idea that you cannot even comprehend what a CEO does.
The best response I can hope for to my comment is one that tries to explain the mechanism and whether or not it makes society more productive or not and maybe other associated costs if there are any.
Does this mean that I have been missing the CEO tournaments? surely they must compete with one another after all how else can you compare who is better without a direct face off?. It seems like the big companies always get the best CEOs so they must have scouts all over the place on the lookout for that great undiscovered CEO talent.
Or could it be that big companies always produce "great" CEO because its a lot harder to fail and a lot easier to win when you are stearing the biggest ships.
Oh but they do! That’s the rub. Also it’s very hand wavy to say “the CEO’s job is exceptionally difficult”. But that person has a whole bunch of people bringing him ideas and trying to improve the company. In fact, that’s how you even get promoted. So they pick a bunch of things to do. If it doesn’t go well and the stock tanks, the first person to leave are the workers and not the CEO. In fact, in almost every case the CEO is the last to get affected. Win or lose for the company, the CEOs only win.
The NBA compensates workers based on the value they bring to the team. Isn't that what the UAW is arguing for?
The UAW has skilled workers, and they are compensated well in general. Perhaps they should earn, more or less, I'm not sure. But the relative value is exactly the point.
So start there instead of making it seem like your few specific examples speak for the entire population of CEOs. Talk about the CEOs who fumbled completely during COVID despite having a great position, demanded benefits despite their huge reserves and are now crying about having to pay it back while their profits are up.
Talk about the CEOs dumping their toxic waste straight into the rivers to avoid having to pay costs. And the CEOs who push for every trick in the book to pay a close to zero net tax. And the ones who will lobby and keep almost any potential upstart from ever becoming a threat. And those who have solidified themselves in their branch thanks to first mover advantage, and can do whatever they want and still succeed despite our 'competitive free market' (yeah right).
>They deserve to earn drastically more than the average worker.
They already did in absolute terms. Percentages compound. How about explaining why CEOs need an even bigger advantage in both absolute and relative terms than they had before? Did the workers not contribute to their success?
And why are the workers the first to feel the headwind whereas the CEOs are the first to feel the tailwind?
The top 450? There's only 450 players.
> earn more in salary every year than the CEOs of the S&P 500.
No. They don't.
There are 30 teams, with a salary cap of $136M, i.e. $4.08B.
I'm looking at the top CEO salaries and I'm already at $2.6B and I'm only at number 20.
I appreciate how many of you immediately jump to make such egregiously bad displays of business logic in response to someone asserting that you cannot even comprehend the job of a top CEO.
Yet somehow, bundling in endorsements and book deals and other extracurriculars when referring to NBA player salaries? Totally reasonable, apparently.
"Steve Jobs only took a $1 salary from Apple!"
Is that performance related pay?
Or is it Crony Capitalism?
Sure. It's the same framework that explains the pay of Lebron James. The NBA became a massively popular global game during the era of fast growth globalization, in which billions of consumers entered into the active global economy.
Now you've got like 50 players earning $30m or more per year in the NBA. To play a game in just the US market.
~450 active players earning around $5 billion per year in just league salary (not counting endorsements).
Now do it for global football, NFL football, Nascar, Major League Baseball, Hockey, F1, and so on.
Who knows the insane total compensation figure. $30 billion?
The economic force producing that comically massive figure, is the exact same reason Tim Cook is worth every dollar he's getting paid to operate the juggernaut that is Apple. The same goes for Nadella at Microsoft.
The top 450 NBA players earn more in salary every year than the CEOs of the S&P 500. Why shouldn't a CEO get paid extraordinarily well, as well as an NBA all-star, for operating a $10 or $20 billion market cap corporation? Obviously they should.
The only time I see arguments against high CEO pay (speaking generally), it's from people that know absolutely nothing about what a CEO does or how exceptionally difficult it is to operate a very big company.
And should mediocre CEOs that fail or otherwise perform poorly get golden parachutes? No, of course not. Exceptional CEOs should get properly exceptional pay. They deserve to earn drastically more than the average worker.
The common Redditor railing against CEO pay, looks at a Tim Cook and thinks they can maybe do what Cook does (he just sits in his chair in a big office while other people do all the work, dur dur dur), or what Nadella does, or a random S&P 500 CEO does. In reality they can barely do their own basic job, much less one ten tiers above them. The average Redditor is further away from being able to do Tim Cook's job than they are being able to do the job of Lebron James. The issue is the average person doesn't know anything about what a CEO does at all, they're entirely ignorant of it. However they can watch Lebron James play basketball and immediately understand they can't do anything like what James can do, because they get the physical visual display immediately, meanwhile they know zip about the job of a CEO at a big company. As usual the issue is extreme ignorance and mediocre education.